Publisher: Paris: Michel Bobin, 1657.

Illustration: Woodcut printer’s ornament; decorative initials & headpieces

Edition: First edition

Binding: Contemporary limp vellum with yapp edges, manuscript title to spine; unsophisticated, naturally rippled, with age-toning but still handsome and sound.

Description: Quarto volume of more than 540 pages, printed with privilege du Roy at Paris by Michel Bobin, the Palais bookseller who supplied the legal profession at the very heart of French justice. This substantial collection preserves the arguments of Auguste and Thomas Galland, two of the most eminent advocates of the Parlement of Paris, alongside the official arrests (decisions) handed down. Issued just after the upheavals of the Fronde, it captures in print the living voice of the bar at a moment when crown and courts were renegotiating their authority. The printing is crisp, margins wide, and the text lively with bold legal reasoning and rhetorical flourish.

Condition: Very good: vellum binding lightly toned and rippled with minor edgewear, manuscript title to spine legible; textblock crisp, clean, with occasional faint foxing; strong, unsophisticated copy.

Annotation: Provenance: Armorial ex-libris of Émery Bigot (1626–1689), famed Rouen bibliophile, from the celebrated Bibliotheca Bigotiana dispersed in 1706.

Item #115

Price: $1,100.00